


A Broken Pot

by Ub_sessed



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: I believe in life after Geralt, Jaskier moves on, Lambert is here!, Lambert joins us in chapter 2, M/M, jambert, mentions of sex but no details, really quite literally jambert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27679616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ub_sessed/pseuds/Ub_sessed
Summary: Some people might still be spry at forty-seven, but three decades of walking (and chasing and fleeing and falling and fighting and stumbling) his way across the Continent had not been kind to his joints, and his joints were angry about it. Really quite angry. So the life of a travelling bard was out. It was time to look for steadier work. Time to settle down. In one place. And stay there. Without leaving. The same place, year after year.Oh gods no, there was no way that was going to happen.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion/Lambert
Comments: 2
Kudos: 46





	1. In Which Jaskier Bemoans his Woes

**Author's Note:**

> This is gonna get smutty in chapter 3, so watch the tags: I'm updating them as I go.  
> I am @ub-sessed on Tumblr.

Jaskier had tried to move on, he really had. But it turned out that wartime wasn’t the best time to try to reinvent your public persona. Well, when he thought about it, it seemed like a war would be the perfect opportunity to reinvent his public persona, so the fact that he hadn’t managed to do so probably meant that he just didn’t have what it took. That he wasn’t actually able to function as an independent adult. He tried to accept that being anything more – anything other – than a hanger-on was not a realistic goal for him. 

He’d had to accept that, because there had been Ciri to think about. She’d needed him. He couldn’t bear the idea of Ciri being left to weather Geralt’s volatile moods on her own. She needed Jaskier there to soften the blows, to lift her spirits, to make sure she understood that she wasn’t to blame when Geralt snapped and growled. She was just a child. A very tough, very very sophisticated child, but no child should be expected to cope with that kind of temper on her own. Jaskier had lost any faith in his ability to read other people’s emotions when it came to himself, but he knew for certain that Geralt loved Ciri deeply, and Jaskier was going to make damn sure she felt that love in spite of Geralt’s ass-backwards ways of expressing it.

So here he was, five years after Geralt had not-so-politely told Jaskier to remove himself from Geralt’s life, still following Geralt around. Jaskier tried to be marginally less annoying, and Geralt tried to be marginally less of an asshole. It was a choice Jaskier had made. (Mostly because he didn’t feel like he could make any other.) It was for Ciri. 

But Ciri wasn’t a child anymore. She was a young woman now, going off on her own, and Jaskier no longer had any excuse to stay with Geralt. Jaskier didn’t want to stay with Geralt anymore. He had spent five years forcing himself to be somebody he wasn’t (which wasn’t a good example to set for Ciri, he knew, but his being himself led to violent arguments that weren’t any good for Ciri either).

And Jaskier was _not_ a young man now. Some people might still be spry at forty-seven, but three decades of walking (and chasing and fleeing and falling and fighting and stumbling) his way across the Continent had not been kind to his joints, and his joints were angry about it. Really quite angry. So the life of a travelling bard was out. It was time to look for steadier work. Time to settle down. In one place. And stay there. Without leaving. The same place, year after year.

Oh gods no, there was no way that was going to happen.


	2. In which Jaskier Bemoans his Woes to Lambert and Lambert is Not Helpful

“What the fuck is an independent adult?”

Jaskier had known that Lambert was not going to be a sympathetic ear, but there was ale (there was really quite a lot of ale), and there was a witcher, and who the fuck else was he going to talk to about this? What did he care if yet another witcher thought he was a pathetic failure of a human being? Chances were that all the witchers already thought that anyway.

Of course Lambert and Jaskier had fucked, back when Jaskier had first arrived at Kaer Morhen with Geralt and Ciri. Lambert had leered at Jaskier, and Jaskier had leered right back, and then they had both spent the night doing what they really wanted to: annoying the shit out of Geralt, as loudly as possible. (The sex had been good too. Lambert was, unsurprisingly, a very energetic lover, with an obvious glee that was contagious.) 

The next morning over breakfast they had made lewd (but discreet!) gestures at each other with the sausages and Jaskier had altogether too much enjoyed licking some cream off his spoon, but when Lambert had looked Jaskier right in the eye and made obscene squelching noises with the jam pot, Ciri had exclaimed a particularly unimpressed “Ew!” and stormed off. Jaskier was immediately so ashamed that his sex drive had vanished for weeks. Of course Ciri had been able to hear them too! What had he been thinking? He hadn't been thinking, of course. Somebody had waved a prick in front of his face and suddenly his rational mind ceased to function. Gods he was pathetic. Lambert hadn't seemed to care either way.

Jaskier hadn't had a lot of sex since then: He had more important things to think about. What with his responsibilities for Ciri, sex was just wasn’t a priority anymore. 

Which of course was revealed to be bullshit any time anybody came on to him: Like in the old days, one suggestive smile the rest of the world would disappear in a haze of desire and possibility. But when it turned out that his suitor only wanted a quick fuck, or that they were significantly less charming than they had seemed in the moment, Jaskier couldn’t bounce back with the buoyant heartbreak that he had as a youthful bard on a mission. He was getting genuinely tired of people not mentioning that they were married. Or treating him like nothing more than a pretty airhead. And on the occasions that he would wake to discover that he had bedded somebody who saw elves or witchers as inferior, it actually left him shuddering. How could he have let such a person touch him like that? How could he possibly have been so enamoured? Was he really so desperate? Each romp left Jaskier feeling colder, a reminder of his own terrible judgement when it came to affairs of the heart (as if living with Geralt wasn't already a daily reminder). He stopped being such a flirt, and people became less interested in him. He couldn't help but assume that he had become less attractive now that he was older. Sex was a bad idea anyway. It had only ever gotten him in trouble. Love? Even worse. Wasn't in the cards for him. He had believed in love, in its power to change people. He had believed in devotion. He had been so wrong. And what the fuck was a bard who didn't believe in love? Worthless.

But standing up in front of a room full of students, holding them captive with his words, he would forget all of that for a while. With all their eyes on him he was back in his element, and all the voices in his head would disappear for that hour or two, his mind completely engaged in the joy and challenge of communicating what he knew, in drawing discoveries out of his students. The other aspects of the job, unfortunately, he was less good at: He seemed to be completely incapable of doing paperwork or meeting deadlines, and trying to grade papers made him tear his hair out. And drove him to drink. Hence all the ale.

Jaskier sloshed his drink at Lambert. “You know, a grown up. Somebody who isn't dependent on somebody else to live.”

“Name me one fucking independent adult.”

“Well, you, for starters.”

“I'm a fucking witcher. Bunch of crazy old men tortured me for years to make me this way. That what you want?”

“Better than this pathetic mess,” Jaskier mumbled into his mug.

“Damn, you really need to get laid.”

“That is the exact opposite of what I need.”


End file.
